No matter how much the Black Muslims threatened him, Malcolm refused to back down. On Friday, June 12, he arrived in Boston under police escort. An anonymous caller warned a radio station dispatcher that Malcolm would be “bumped off” if he spoke on the air. Undeterred, he recited Muhammad’s affairs on air and called him a fraud. Later that evening, when he appeared on another station, Malcolm said that Boston minister Louis X knew all about Muhammad’s transgressions long before he did. He also claimed that National Secretary John Ali had ordered a hit on him. According to one witness, Ali had recently visited the New York mosque, trying to convince the lieutenants that Malcolm had to die. Malcolm accused Louis, John, and other officials of conspiring against him, essentially “declaring war on the entire leadership group of the Nation of Islam.”14
In the following days, after the NYPD received several tips about an attempt on his life, Malcolm prepared for a two-day eviction trial. The proceedings began on June 15, when thirty-two police officers and eight bodyguards escorted him into the Queens courthouse for the Civil Court of the City of New York. When he took the stand, he looked out into the courtroom and saw about fifty menacing faces from the Fruit staring back at him. That same day, the Fruit held its regularly scheduled meeting at Mosque No. 7, where more than 180 soldiers from New York and New Jersey heard one of the speakers declare, “We should destroy Malcolm.” Yet one of the captains, most likely Joseph, warned that the timing was not right. “Malcolm is not to be touched, the rest is okay.”15
On the second day of the trial, Malcolm testified for nearly two hours. At times he appeared unnerved, fidgeting and rambling. He did not have a solid legal claim on the house, even if Muhammad had told him it was his home. Near the end of his testimony, perhaps realizing that he was losing the case, Malcolm blurted that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad had taken nine wives. Dismayed, his lawyer, Percy Sutton, tried to redirect him, but Malcolm persisted. “This is the reason for my suspension,” he said. “My mouth was closed so that I couldn’t talk.”16
With each passing day, he more viciously attacked Elijah. “Muhammad was nobody until I came to New York as his emissary,” he argued. He suggested that since Muhammad broke with him, blacks had left the Nation in droves. Muhammad was so furious about the rising number of apostates that he planned to speak at a New York rally on June 28. The truth, Malcolm suggested, was that Mosque No. 7 no longer made the same kind of money it did when he was the minister there. “They haven’t found anyone to do the job I have been doing in New York.” Convinced that he was irreplaceable, Malcolm imagined that no one else in the Nation could excite the Black Muslims the way he once did. But he was wrong.17
IT WAS THE kind of heat-soaked day when the police expect trouble. On June 28, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X organized competing rallies, battling for the soul of Harlem. In the days leading up to Muhammad’s arrival, the police had heard rumors that Malcolm’s men would assassinate him at the airport. They had also heard that the Black Muslims would never allow Malcolm to preach on the same day as Muhammad. The threats became so intense that Malcolm wrote Muhammad an open letter declaring a truce, but he knew as well as Elijah did that the war would not end without causalities.18
At 142nd Street and Fifth Avenue, a long line formed outside the Harlem Armory, where members of the Fruit frisked the crowd, searching for weapons and spies. Inside the building, the Fruit’s security team took their positions, guarding the exits and patrolling the aisles. Two ranks stood in front of the speakers’ platform, arms folded, while another squad scanned the audience from the balcony. Packing the auditorium, an estimated 7,500 followers stood up when a phalanx escorted Elijah on stage. Muhammad delivered a seventy-five minute harangue, coughing and wheezing as he strained his voice, while the audience fanned the stifling air with programs. Denouncing Malcolm without mentioning his name, he fumed, “There is some person who wants to be what I am, but that person is not able to be what I am.”19
Sitting a few feet away from Elijah, where Malcolm once sat, the Nation’s guest speaker, a handsome, enthusiastic black man, led the chorus, “Teach us! Teach us!” Reminding the faithful of his power, Elijah preached, “Maybe you won’t believe it, but I am the key to everyone of you. I’m not something of myself, I’m something of a God.” Nodding, the guest speaker shouted above the crowd’s applause, “Yes, sir! Yes, sir!”